Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (tm) Ver. 4.8

6: The Reformation Durant, Will

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THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION

VOLUME SIX

THE REFORMATION

1957

A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin:

1300-1564

by Will Durant

Exclusive electronic rights granted to World Library, Inc.

by The Ethel B. Durant Trust, William James Durant Easton,

and Monica Ariel Mihell.

DEDICATION

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TO LOUIS, MOLLIE, AND ERIC

To the Reader

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THE prospective reader deserves a friendly notice that The

Reformation *06000 is not quite an honest title for this book. An

accurate title would be: "A History of European Civilization Outside

of Italy from 1300 to 1564, or Thereabouts, Including the History of

Religion in Italy and an Incidental View of Islamic and Judaic

Civilization in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia." Why so meandering a

thematic frontier? Because Volume IV ( The Age of Faith ) in this

"Story of Civilization" brought European history only to 1300, and

Volume V ( The Renaissance ) confined itself to Italy, 1304-1576,

deferring the Italian echoes of the Reformation. So this Volume VI

must begin at 1300; and the reader will be amused to find that

Luther arrives on the scene only after a third of the tale has been

told. But let us privately agree that the Reformation really began

with John Wyclif and Louis of Bavaria in the fourteenth century,

progressed with John Huss in the fifteenth, and culminated explosively

in the sixteenth with the reckless monk of Wittenberg. Those whose

present interest is only in the religious revolution may omit Chapters

III-VI and IX-X without irreparable loss.

The Reformation, then, is the central, but not the only, subject

of this book. We begin by considering religion in general, its

functions in the soul and the group, and the conditions and problems

of the Roman Catholic Church in the two centuries before Luther. We

shall watch England in 1376-82, Germany in 1320-47, and Bohemia in

1402-85, rehearsing the ideas and conflicts of the Lutheran

Reformation; and as we proceed we shall note how social revolution,

with communistic aspirations, marched hand in hand with the

religious revolt. We shall weakly echo Gibbon's chapter on the fall of

Constantinople, and shall perceive how the advance of the Turks to the

gates of Vienna made it possible for one man to defy at once an

emperor and a pope. We shall consider sympathetically the efforts of

Erasmus for the peaceful self-reform of the Church. We shall study

Germany on the eve of Luther, and may thereby come to understand how

inevitable he was when he came. In Book II the Reformation proper will

hold the stage, with Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, Zwingli and

Calvin in Switzerland, Henry VIII in England, Knox in Scotland, and

Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, with a side glance at the long duel between

Francis I and Charles V; and other aspects of European life in that

turbulent half-century (1517-64) will be postponed in order to let the

religious drama unfold itself without confusing delays. Book III

will look at "the strangers in the gate": Russia and the Ivans and the

Orthodox Church; Islam and its challenging creed, culture, and

power; and the struggle of the Jews to find Christians in Christendom.

Book IV will go "behind the scenes" to study the law and economy,

morals and manners, art and music, literature and science and

philosophy of Europe in the age of Luther. In Book V we shall make

an experiment in empathy- shall attempt to view the Reformation from

the standpoint of the imperiled Church; and we shall be forced to

admire the calm audacity with which she weathered the encompassing

storm. In a brief epilogue we shall try to see the Renaissance and the

Reformation, Catholicism and the Enlightenment, in the large

perspective of modern history and thought.

It is a fascinating but difficult subject, for almost every word

that one may write about it can be disputed or give offense. I have

tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors

his views, and that nothing is so irritating as impartiality. The

reader should be warned that I was brought up as a fervent Catholic,

and that I retain grateful memories of the devoted secular priests,

and learned Jesuits, and kindly nuns who bore so patiently with my

brash youth; but he should note, too, that I derived much of my

education from lecturing for thirteen years in a Presbyterian church

under the tolerant auspices of sterling Protestants like Jonathan C.

Day, William Adams Brown, Henry Sloane Coffin, and Edmund Chaffee; and

that many of my most faithful auditors in that Presbyterian church

were Jews whose thirst for education and understanding gave me a new

insight into their people. Less than any man have I excuse for

prejudice; and I feel for all creeds the warm sympathy of one who

has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith,

and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I

know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the

streets.

I thank Dr. Arthur Upham Pope, founder of the Asia Institute, for

correcting some of the errors in the chapters on Islam; Dr. Gerson

Cohen, of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, for checking the

pages on the Jews; my friend Harry Kaufman of Los Angeles for

reviewing the section on music; and, pleno cum corde, my wife for

her unremitting aid and illuminating comments at every stage in our

co-operative labor on this book.

If the Reaper will stay his hand, there will be a concluding

Volume VII, The Age of Reason, which should appear some five years

hence, and should carry the story of civilization to Napoleon. There

we shall make our bow and retire, deeply grateful to all who have

borne the weight of these tomes on their hands, and have forgiven

numberless errors in our attempt to unravel the present into its

constituent past. For the present is the past rolled up for action,

and the past is the present unrolled for our understanding.

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WILL

DURANT

Los Angeles, May 12, 1957

NOTES ON THE USE OF THIS BOOK

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1. Dates of birth and death are usually omitted from the text, but

will be found in the Index.

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2. The religious standpoint of authors quoted or referred to in

the text is indicated in the Bibliography by the letters C, J, P, or

R, for Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, or rationalist.

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3. Passages intended for resolute students rather than for the

general reader are indicated by reduced type.

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4. To make this volume an independent unit some passages from The

Renaissance, on the history of the Church before the Reformation,

have been summarized in the opening chapter.

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5. The location of works of art, when not indicated in the text,

will usually be found in the Index under the artist's name. The name

of a city will, in such allocations, be used to indicate its leading

gallery, as follows:

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Amsterdam- Rijksmuseum

Augsburg- Gemaldegalerie

Barcelona- Museum of Catalan Art

Basel- Offentliche Kunstsammlung

Bergamo- Accademia Carrara

Berlin- Kaiser-Friedrich Museum

Bremen- Kunsthalle

Brussels- Museum

Budapest- Museum of Fine Arts

Chicago- Art Institute

Cincinnati- Art Museum

Cleveland- Museum of Art

Colmar- Museum Unterlinden

Cologne- Wallraf Richarts Museum

Copenhagen- Statens Museum for Kunst

Detroit- Institute of Art

Frankfurt- Stadelsches Kunstinstitut

Geneva- Musee d'Art et d'Histoire

The Hague- Mauritshuis

Leningrad- Hermitage

Lisbon- National Museum

London- National Gallery

Madrid- Prado

Milan- Brera

Minneapolis- Institute of Arts

Munich- Haus der Kunst

Naples- Museo Nazionale

New York- Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nuremberg- Germanisches National Museum

Philadelphia- Johnson Collection

Prague- State Gallery

San Diego- Fine Arts Gallery

Stockholm- National Museum

Toledo- Museum of Art

Vienna- Kunsthistorisches Museum

Washington- National Gallery

Worcester- Art Museum

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The galleries of Florence will be distinguished by their names,

Uffizi or Pitti, as will the Borghese and Galleria Nazionale in Rome.

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6. This volume will reckon the crown, the livre, the florin, and the

ducat of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries at $25.00 in the money

of the United States in 1954; the franc and the shilling at $5.00; the

ecu at $15.00; the mark at $66.67; the pound sterling at $100.00.

These equivalents are loose guesswork, and repeated debasements of the

currencies make them still more hazardous. We note that in 1390 a

student could be boarded at Oxford for two shillings a week; `06001

about 1424 Joan of Arc's horse cost sixteen francs; `06002 about

1460 a maid in the service of Leonardo da Vinci's father received

eight florins a year. `06003

BOOK I: FROM WYCLIF TO LUTHER: 1300-1517

CHAPTER I: The Roman Catholic Church: 1300-1517

I. THE SERVICES OF CHRISTIANITY

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RELIGION is the last subject that the intellect begins to

understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority,

its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel

at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its

patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or

Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire. What are

the secrets of this resilience?

The wisest sage would need the perspective of a hundred lives to

answer adequately. He might begin by recognizing that even in the

heyday of science there are innumerable phenomena for which no

explanation seems forthcoming in terms of natural cause,

quantitative measurement, and necessary effect. The mystery of mind

still eludes the formulas of psychology, and in physics the same

astonishing order of nature that makes science possible may reasonably

sustain the religious faith in a cosmic intelligence. Our knowledge is

a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance. Now life is

rarely agnostic; it assumes either a natural or a supernatural

source for any unexplained phenomenon, and acts on the one

assumption or the other; only a small minority of minds can

persistently suspend judgment in the face of contradictory evidence.

The great majority of mankind feel compelled to ascribe mysterious

entities or events to supernatural beings raised above "natural

law." Religion has been the worship of supernatural beings- their

propitiation, solicitation, or adoration. Most men are harassed and

buffeted by life, and crave supernatural assistance when natural

forces fail them; they gratefully accept faiths that give dignity

and hope to their existence, and order and meaning to the world;

they could hardly condone so patiently the careless brutalities of

nature, the bloodshed and chicaneries of history, or their own

tribulations and bereavements, if they could not trust that these

are parts of an inscrutable but divine design. A cosmos without

known cause or fate is an intellectual prison; we long to believe that

the great drama has a just author and a noble end.

Moreover, we covet survival, and find it hard to conceive that

nature should so laboriously produce man, mind, and devotion only to

snuff them out in the maturity of their development. Science gives man

ever greater powers but ever less significance; it improves his

tools and neglects his purposes; it is silent on ultimate origins,

values, and aims; it gives life and history no meaning or worth that

is not canceled by death or omnivorous time. So men prefer the

assurance of dogma to the diffidence of reason; weary of perplexed

thought and uncertain judgment, they welcome the guidance of an

authoritative church, the catharsis of the confessional, the stability

of a long-established creed. Ashamed of failure, bereaved of those

they loved, darkened with sin, and fearful of death, they feel

themselves redeemed by divine aid, cleansed of guilt and terror,

solaced and inspired with hope, and raised to a godlike and immortal

destiny.

Meanwhile, religion brings subtle and pervasive gifts to society and

the state. Traditional rituals soothe the spirit and bind the

generations. The parish church becomes a collective home, weaving

individuals into a community. The cathedral rises as the product and

pride of the unified municipality. Life is embellished with sacred

art, and religious music pours its mollifying harmony into the soul

and the group. To a moral code uncongenial to our nature and yet

indispensable to civilization, religion offers supernatural

sanctions and supports: an all-seeing deity, the threat of eternal

punishment, the promise of eternal bliss, and commandments of no

precariously human authority but of divine origin and imperative

force. Our instincts were formed during a thousand centuries of

insecurity and the chase; they fit us to be violent hunters and

voracious polygamists rather than peaceable citizens; their once

necessary vigor exceeds present social need; they must be checked a

hundred times a day, consciously or not, to make society and

civilization possible. Families and states, from ages before

history, have enlisted the aid of religion to moderate the barbarous

impulses of men. Parents found religion helpful in taming the

willful child to modesty and self-restraint; educators valued it as

a precious means of disciplining and refining youth; governments

long since sought its co-operation in forging social order out of

the disruptive egoism and natural anarchism of men. If religion had

not existed, the great legislators- Hammurabi, Moses, Lycurgus, Numa

Pompilius- would have invented it. They did not have to, for it arises

spontaneously and repeatedly from the needs and hopes of men.

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Through a formative millennium, from Constantine to Dante, the

Christian Church offered the gifts of religion to men and states. It

molded the figure of Jesus into a divine embodiment of virtues by

which rough barbarians might be shamed into civilization. It

formulated a creed that made every man's life a part, however

modest, of a sublime cosmic drama; it bound each individual in a

momentous relation with a God Who had created him, Who had spoken to

him in sacred Scriptures, Who had therein given him a moral code,

Who had descended from heaven to suffer ignominy and death in

atonement for the sins of humanity, and Who had founded the Church

as the repository of His teaching and the earthly agent of His

power. Year by year the magnificent drama grew; saints and martyrs

died for the creed, and bequeathed their example and their merits to

the faithful. A hundred forms- a hundred thousand works- of art

interpreted the drama and made it vivid even for letterless minds.

Mary the Virgin Mother became "the fairest flower of all poesy," the

formative model of feminine delicacy and maternal love, the

recipient of the tenderest hymns and devotions, the inspirer of

majestic architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. An

impressive ceremony raised daily, from a million altars, the mystic

and exalting solemnity of the Mass. Confession and penance purified

the contrite sinner, prayer comforted and strengthened him, the

Eucharist brought him into an awesome intimacy with Christ, the last

sacraments cleansed and anointed him in expectation of paradise.

Rarely had religion developed such artistry in its ministrations to

mankind.

The Church was at her best when, by the consolations of her creed,

the magic of her ritual, the nobler morality of her adherents, the

courage, zeal, and integrity of her bishops, and the superior

justice of her episcopal courts, she took the place vacated by the

Roman Imperial government as the chief source of order and peace in

the Dark Ages (approximately 524-1079 A.D.) of the Christian world. To

the Church, more than to any other institution, Europe owed the

resurrection of civilization in the West after the barbarian

inundation of Italy, Gaul, Britain, and Spain. Her monks developed

waste lands, her monasteries gave food to the poor, education to boys,

lodging to travelers; her hospitals received the sick and the

destitute. Her nunneries sheltered mateless women and directed their

maternal impulses to social ends; for centuries the nuns alone

provided schooling for girls. If classic culture was not completely

lost in the illiterate flood, it was because monks, while allowing

or causing many pagan manuscripts to perish, copied and preserved

thousands of them, and kept alive the Greek and Latin languages in

which they were written; it was in ecclesiastical libraries, at St.

Gall, Fulda, Monte Cassino, and elsewhere, that the humanists of the

Renaissance found precious relics of brilliant civilizations that

had never heard the name of Christ. For a thousand years, from Ambrose

to Wolsey, it was the Church that trained Western Europe's teachers,

scholars, judges, diplomats, and ministers of state; the medieval

state rested on the Church. When the Dark Ages ended- say with the

birth of Abelard- it was the Church that built the universities and

the Gothic cathedrals, providing homes for the intellect, as well as

for the piety, of men. Under her protection the Scholastic

philosophers renewed the ancient attempt to interpret human life and

destiny by reason. Through nine centuries almost all European art

was inspired and financed by the Church; and even when art took a

pagan color the popes of the Renaissance continued their patronage.

Music in its higher forms was a daughter of the Church.

Above all, the Church at her zenith gave to the states of Europe

an international moral code and government. Just as the Latin

language, taught in the schools by the Church, served as a unifying

medium for the scholarship, literature, science, and philosophy of

diverse nations, and just as the Catholic- i.e., universal- creed

and ritual gave religious unity to a Europe not yet divided into

sovereign nationalities, so the Roman Church, claiming divine

establishment and spiritual leadership, proposed herself as an

international court, to which all rulers and states were to be morally

responsible. Pope Gregory VII formulated this doctrine of a

Christian Republic of Europe; the Emperor Henry IV recognized it by

submitting to Gregory at Canossa (1077); a century later a stronger

emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, after a long resistance, humbled

himself at Venice before a weaker pope, Alexander III; and in 1198

Pope Innocent III raised the authority and prestige of the papacy to a

point where for a time it seemed that Gregory's ideal of a moral

superstate had come to fulfillment.

The great dream broke on the nature of man. The administrators of

the papal judiciary proved human, biased, venal, even extortionate;

and the kings and peoples, also human, resented any supernational

power. The growing wealth of France stimulated her pride of national

sovereignty; Philip IV successfully challenged the authority of Pope

Boniface VIII over the property of the French Church; the King's

emissaries imprisoned the aged Pontiff for three days at Anagni, and

Boniface died soon afterward (1303). In one of its basic aspects-

the revolt of secular rulers against the popes- the Reformation

there and then began.

II. THE CHURCH AT NADIR: 1307-1417

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Throughout the fourteenth century the Church suffered political

humiliation and moral decay. She had begun with the profound sincerity

and devotion of Peter and Paul; she had grown into a majestic system

of familial, scholastic, social, international discipline, order,

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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